God is so amazing to me. I’ve been in a spiritual slump…I guess that’s what you call it. It’s more like I’ve been very lazy spiritually. God used Facebook and I made a connection with a local pastor. I visited the church and suddenly I felt like He was showing me where I belonged, church wise. The more often I went, the more certain I was that this was the place I belonged. Even though I desperately wanted a place to belong, I also knew that finding that place was just one step in really find the place God wanted me – that place of serving Him and His body with the particular gifts He has given to me. I believe with all my heart that God doesn’t want anyone to just come to church and sit on the pews, He wants us all to be active participants. Ephesians 4:16 is a scripture He often brings up when I get to whining about wanting to just go to church and “do my own thing” - ”from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. “ I just read those words and my heart aches. I know God is telling me that I am part of something bigger than myself and that He created me to work properly. When I do what He created me to do, then I am taking part in the body, helping it function, helping other parts do what He has called them to do and everyone is growing. But when I am selfish and choose to isolate myself or not participate because it’s uncomfortable then I am actually withholding God’s provision for the body, because He is providing for other through me and vice versa. The scripture that talks about not forsaking the gathering together of the saints, doesn’t mean “oh you’re a sinner if you don’t go to church and warm that pew” it means that other saints have something that you need and you have something they need.
This really hit home with me a few years ago. I was a member of a house church and I went for a long period of time not attending. I went to Sunday services but not the weekly house meeting. Mostly it was laziness but partly it was because I felt like God was going to ask something of me there and I didn’t want to take responsibility if I messed it up, because I was so sure I would mess up anything He gave me to do. (The devil is a liar and so are a lot of people who don’t want to see you go further in the Lord than they go.) When I finally got up the nerve to come back, I told them that after missing a few meetings it just kept getting harder and harder to come back so I didn’t. Which was also true. I wasn’t at a place I could admit to myself or anyone else that I was terrified of failing God or succeeding and having to take responsibility for something. The house church pastor, Randy, said something I will never forget – “Anysia, when you stay away, you are withholding a gift that we need. You don’t only miss out, so does everyone else.” I had never thought of it that way before and it didn’t do a lot to make me feel better but it did make me feel sufficiently guilty not to miss very many more meetings!
So, I was back in that place again where I just knew that God was about to break me through into something new and that I was finally going to be used for something for His glory…and I got scared and stopped going to church. Sure I had other things I was doing. One Sunday I was sick, another I was out of town, a variety of things came up but I could have gone had I just made the commitment to go. I didn’t talk to God about it. I just didn’t “feel” like going. As I withdrew from church, I started to withdraw from other things – particularly friends that I keep in contact with via e-mail. I had no motivation to write them. I was pulling away and going into my little shell and doing a pretty good job at justifying it. Then I realized what was happening.
God is sneaky sometimes. Of course, with me He often has to be. LOL. I was doing my daily bible reading, so proud that I have read every single day this year and am on target for finishing the whole bible this year for the first time ever. Even in the midst of my pride I was feeling pretty tiny and miserable – I knew that I was not doing what God wanted me to do and that is a horrible place to be if you really love God and want to please Him. There is nothing more miserable to the God-lover than to be hiding from His will! My reading for that day had me in Hebrews 12. I was reading kind of half heartedly, mostly just wanting to finish so I could check it off my list and get to sleep. That’s when He got me!!!
Hebrews 12:2 hit me like a brick – “Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble,”… He was reminding me of my call, taking me back to the scripture He gave me shortly after I became a Christian that resounded in my heart as His promise and His purpose for my life: Isaiah 35:3-7 “ 3Encourage the exhausted, and strengthen the feeble.
4Say to those with anxious heart,
”Take courage, fear not
Behold, your God will come with vengeance;
The recompense of God will come,
But He will save you.”
5Then the eyes of the blind will be opened
And the ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
6Then the lame will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the mute will shout for joy
For waters will break forth in the wilderness
And streams in the Arabah.
7The scorched land will become a pool
And the thirsty ground springs of water;
In the haunt of jackals, its resting place,
Grass becomes reeds and rushes. “
He didn’t have to say anything. I read the words and I knew that I was standing at a crossroad, that God was giving me the chance to choose the path He set before me, the path I’ve often strayed from or tried to avoid but always longed to be on. As I told a friend – “my greatest fear and my greatest desire”. That night I told Him I would do whatever He wanted me to do and I surrendered to His will. I asked Him to lead me and guide me again and to give me the strength and courage, the confidence in Him to do whatever it was He wanted.
The next day He had me send e-mails to several people with words of encouragement, and one e-mail to the pastor of the church and his wife admitting my wrong attitudes and sharing some of what was going on and why I hadn’t been in church. It was a hard e-mail to write but I knew I had to be accountable to someone and to take a chance on trusting someone again. The real reason it was hard was because I had determined in my heart to never be reliant upon a man or woman, or couple again but to rely solely on the Lord. I had gone that path before but I hadn’t realized is that I had built up a wall against spiritual authority in my life by distancing myself and holding back in many areas.
Their words of encouragement and hope and life helped me embrace what God is doing and I was able to go back to church today, with only a little fear and no serious or noticable trembling.
Since writing those e-mails and being obedient to what the Lord asked of me, God has been talking to me about how He wants to use my writing and my love for teaching to help others come to know Him in a real way and He has reminded me that the dreams He has given me and the promises He spoke to me are not there for me to do alone – they are so BIG because they require Him to be a very active participant every step of the way and that is what God wants. He doesn’t want to just be someone added into our lives, squished in where we think we can fit Him. His desire is to be our lives and have everything else fit in around Him. He wants to be our everything and that is pretty amazing in itself.
The past few days (yes, it’s only been the past few days) I have been remembering what it is that makes me come alive. It is loving Him – in word and in deed. It is showing forth His glory in everything I do. It is ministering His life giving word to those who are in desperate need of a spiritual drink of the truth of the Living God. It is lifting people up in prayer and introducing them to the One I love. It is passionately pursuing my Beloved and telling everyone I can Who He is and how great He is.
All of God wants from any of us is our willingness to love Him and follow Him with hearts filled with trust that He will never leave us or forsake us and that with Him nothing is impossible, no matter how impossible it might seem to us. Isn’t God amazing?
